A recycling service in the Twin Cities' west metro is pioneering a way to recycle food scraps into compost. Customers of Randy's Environmental Services put their leftovers in special blue bags and toss them in their trash. Randy's then picks up the trash and pulls out the bags at the processing plant. The trash is thrown away, and the bag and its contents are composted.

The blue-bag approach would be one way to jump-start Minnesota's recycling rate, which has been stalled at about 43 percent for more than 15 years. Because organic material is about 13 percent of what Americans throw away, recycling food scraps would be one way to increase overall recycling.

Experts say the blue-bag technique is one of seven strategies that would work. A glance:

START NO-SORT

Single-stream recycling, which allows customers to put all recyclables into a single bin, has spread across the metro area, including Shoreview, Woodbury, New Brighton and parts of Minneapolis.

Since New Brighton started single-stream in 2010, the volume of recycled material has increased by 12 percent, according to city administrator Dean Lotter.

The number of houses participating increases, too. Single-stream recycling can boost participation rates from 20 to 40 percent, according to Rich Hirstein, senior area municipal services manager for Allied Waste Services.

Advertisement

That's what happen in Fridley. When Allied started the single-stream service, the number of households recycling leaped to 91 percent from about 55 percent in four months.

"You have to make it easy for people," said Hirstein.

TARGET BUSINESSES

For homes, centralized organics recycling is catching on slowly. But recyclers have had success by concentrating on schools and businesses.

The best example is RiverCentre in downtown St. Paul.

Three years ago, it was a recycling slacker -- with only 15 percent of its garbage recycled. Today, it's a recycling rock star, recycling 59 percent of its trash.

The center reclaimed 1.4 million pounds of material last year, said Bill Huepenbecker, senior director of planning and public affairs.

The center bought bins for bottles and cans, plastic and organics, which is mostly leftover food. It bought an organics recycling compactor. It shopped for -- and found -- compostable wrappers, plates, cups and silverware. And when an event is over, its workers sort through the regular trash containers, sifting out the food mistakenly thrown away.

Land O'Lakes has done something similar in its facilities in Shoreview and Arden Hills. The company recycles 45 percent of its waste output.

About 9 percent of the total, or 15,000 pounds, is recycled organically, said Rebecca Kenow, the company's director of sustainability.

More organics recycling is on the way. Troje's Trash and Recycling of Inver Grove Heights announced last week that it had started food-scrap recycling services for businesses in Ramsey and Washington counties.

Participation is low because of lack of infrastructure, such as trucks, bins and composting sites. But there's a lack of infrastructure because participation is low.

If the public investment is made, said Hansen, homeowners will find it easier to recycle everything, including food scraps. Then, he said, participation rates will rise.

MAKE PEOPLE PAY

Only a limited number of customers will seek out a recycling hauler and pay separately for curbside food-scrap composting service. But when everyone must pay, participation rates soar.

For example, Eureka Recycling wants to start single-stream and organics recycling services in St. Paul in 2013. Every customer would pay an additional $1.90 each month -- whether they used the organics recycling or not.

Eureka CEO Tim Brownell said he believes the additional services would boost the participation rate from 47 percent now to about 75 percent.

STREAMLINE THE RULES

The metro area is a hodgepodge of rules for trash pickup.

In the Twin Cities and its suburbs, 1,600 trucks and 240 companies are devoted to hauling solid waste, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. That doesn't include the trucks and companies devoted solely to recycling.

"When you have multiple trucks servicing the same neighborhood, and each company has different materials to collect, it's confusing for residents," said Peder Sandhei, recycling specialist for the agency.

Regulations make it difficult to build compost centers. Currently, the primary one in the metro area is in Eureka Township, 26 miles south of downtown St. Paul.

Sending fleets of trucks that far is wasteful, said Anne Ludvik of Specialized Environmental Technologies, which operates the site. Composting substations could reduce the miles the trucks have to travel.

CHARGE DEPOSITS

Ten states now charge a deposit for bottles or cans, usually 5 to 10 cents. Consumers pay the deposit at the store, then take their empties to a redeeming center to get the deposit back.

Nationally, about 35 percent of bottles and cans are recycled, according to the Container Recycling Institute. But in states with deposit laws, that jumps to 60 percent to 95 percent.

USE THE BLUE BAG

With the blue-bag system, homeowners toss their food scraps into the trash. It's more convenient than keeping food scraps in a separate container and wheeling it to the curb, said Randy's spokesman Jim Wollschlager.

He said the blue bag also cuts down on smells, because a homeowner may take the bags to their trash as often as they need to.

Randy's charges about $100 a year for the service, including the bags.

The program was started in 2005 and has spread to communities including Wayzata and Maple Plain. The business has 5,200 customers in Minnetonka alone.

Wollschlager said 35 percent of his customers participate in the blue-bag program.

Recycling comes in shades of green -- some benefitting the environment greatly, some a little, and some not much at all.

-- Aluminum recycling comes closest to paying for itself. It saves 96 percent of the cost of making aluminum cans, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Recycling 1 ton of aluminum cans saves more than 207 million BTU, the equivalent of 1,665 gallons of gasoline, the EPA reported.

-- Plastic is second-best. Depending on the type, recycling plastic saves 60 percent to 90 percent of the energy of making a new product.

-- Paper is third. Savings vary by type, but recycling newsprint saves 45 percent of the cost of producing it new.

-- Glass is the least beneficial non-organic item to recycle. It's made of sand -- and the world will probably never experience a sand shortage. Recycling glass saves about 21 percent of the cost of manufacturing new.